Wednesday, December 25th, 2013, 12:02 pm

Update:
-If you want to get in the limited time Freedom offer with double the normal signup bonus then you should do that soon…
-Plus don’t forget that you have less than a week left to get 5 or 5.5 points per dollar in this quarter’s rotating categories.
-There’s also less than a week to open a Chase checking account to get the 10% bonus on top of 2013 earnings.-You can also now register for 2014 Q1 5x categories!

—————————————————-Originally posted on 12/03:

Chase Freedom is probably the best no annual fee consumer card that exists. It’s a easy card to get approved for and for a limited time only it comes with a 20,000 point signup bonus instead of the normal 10,000 point bonus.

2 things make the card so lucrative:
-Every quarter you can earn 5 points per dollar on up to $1,500 in quarterly spending in rotating categories. Currently that includes department stores as well as Amazon.com. That’s up to 30,000 points per year.
-If you have a Chase checking account you will get a 10% bonus on top of all points earned during the previous year. That means you’ll earn 1.1 points per dollar everywhere and 5.5 points per dollar in the rotating categories. That bumps the bonus category earnings to 33,000 points per year.

Those points can be cashed out for a penny a piece though that’s borderline criminal as the points can be worth so much more when transferred to miles. If you or your spouse has or will get a Sapphire Preferred, Ink Plus, orInk Bold card in the future you can transfer Freedom points over to one of those cards and then transfer them at a 1:1 ratio into much more valuable airline miles (United, British Airways, Southwest, Korean, or Virgin America), hotel points (Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, Priority Club), or Amtrak points. You can read more about the Chase Trifecta and why miles are better than cash back in this post.

There are 2 quarters with gas stations and that includes items bought in gas station stores as well. Last time I maximized that by buying One Vanilla gift cards at 7-Eleven on my Freedom cards. Most 7/11s are categorized as gas stations, you can confirm each one on the Visa merchant categorization site. Then I went next door to Walmart to load them onto Bluebird cards using the last 4 digits of the card as the pin number without even needing to register the card. You can read more about Bluebird in this post.

That’s 8,250 points (per Freedom card) for $14.85 in total fees or 0.18 cents per point. In more practical terms that’s like buying a nonstop one-way business class ticket to Israel on United for $108 or a one-way short-haul flight on American for $8.10.

Lowe’s also sells gift cards to other stores and gas stations. And your favorite restaurant will always be happy to lock in your money as well.

Department stores like Sears also sell gift cards to other stores. You effectively you can spend all $6,000 on gift cards to other stores.

104 Responses to “Chase Freedom Reminders And News”

If I don’t have a need to spend money on products thru amazon, what can I buy thru amazon or these dept stores that I can “cash out”? I looked at Sears and kohls stores yesterday and there were no visa gift cards.

Even though it’s nitpicking, you should state that the earnings of the BONUS categories are only an incremental 6,000 points per quarter. Any card will earn the 1,500 points/miles for the $1,500 proposed spend each quarter.

@Mike (The #hustle Blog):
Fair enough though with Chase checking it’s more than that. And then you have to start nitpicking on the 10% bonus on the 1,500 base spend that other cards may or may not have.

For simplicity’s sake I’ll take it that my readers understand that they can earn 1,500 points per quarter on any card that they spend $1,500 on

The other negative is that it only earns 1 AA mile per dollar. If you want AA miles you’re better off spending money on a Starwood AMEX that earns 1.25 AA miles per dollar thanks to the 20K:25K transfer ratio.

@confused: click on ‘ You can read more about Bluebird in this post. ‘
@ny: You may not even lose the 7% bonus. If you have another Chase card that earns Ultimate Rewards points, you can transfer the points to that card (‘combine UR points’ on the Chase site) and get the bonus points.

@chana k thanks for your input here but as per Dan the man I will not get it others have told me the same, has nothing to do with my transfer I guess because this account gets closed so they wont give me anything for it in 2 months from now.

chase freedom is getting worse and worse. Dan tried hard to make it look easy to get the category bonus but 2014 category bonus are the worst of any year in my 8 yrs as freedom customer.
I will be keeping my freedom in drawyer and use my other chase and non chase cards to earn more points and miles.

@jim:
Give me a break, every quarter has manufactured spend capabilities even if they’re not all on silver platters.

Was this year marginally better? Yes. Significantly better? No.
This is a free card and a darn good one at that. It gives more points per dollar with a checking account than premium cards like Sapphire Preferred do on regular purchases. The 5.5x categories are gravy.

And at least where I live gas stations also sell grocery gift cards, so that’s definitely no big deal. Though I’d rather go with a OneVanilla card over a grocery rebate.

Hey dan great post again, I know when I look at my chase saphirre account online it shows which transactions I earned 2 points per dollar, but I don’t see those details shown on my chase freedom account. How do you know what you’re earning 5 points for ( e.g. for gas station mini marts), do you have to manually calculate the points? Also, is there a way to keep track how much of the 1500 $ cap you spent or you also have to manually calculate that? Thansk

Hi dan I have both the ink bold and ink plus cards if I apple for a chase freedom now, then will I he able to receive the 10% bonus for all 3 cards or just freedom? Also, will instill get bonus even if I’m meeting a spending threshold? Thanks

Dan, I just noticed that my Citi Forward card is giving 5 Thank you points at all restaurants. I just have the Freedom card right now – may sign up for the Sapphire Preferred. Is it worthwhile to use the citi card at restuarants over the Freedom card if I don’t have Sapphire?

David/Dan,
Personally i use Forward>SP for dining. My math is you have to get ~2.34 value out of chase points to match TYP if you value Citi at 1.0. (2.14 * 2.34 = 5).

If you save your points for international/first class type of flights or upscale hyatts you probably can beat 2.34. But if you’re like me and you’re either converting to BA for short haul 15k flights to in-laws that cost a MAX of $250 (under 1.7 cpp value) or selling (under 1.8) then it’s not close to what I get from Citi.

Dan: This is my first post and just wanted to thank you for all the amazing info on your site. I’ve been reading it and absorbing for the past two weeks. I was approved for 5 new cards today (personal and business) thanks to all your terrific advice. I did notice that there were two different bonuses for the Sapphire Preferred. One was 50k with a $125 annual fee, and one was 40k with a $95 annual fee. With all the app-o-rama I didn’t even notice which one I chose! Thanks for saving our family so much $$!!!!

@dan Hi Dan Im new to the credit card churning game. I have had my bank of america mastercard for more than six months, and a capital one card for about 5 months. should I now apply for the chase freedom ? Or should i apply for thee freedom and the chase sapphire preferred using your 2bm method ? Or should I wait longer before applying for everything ? Or should I make some of the amex’s my first churning cards ?

Hi Dan, I have just moved to the USA and have a new social security.
I bank with Chase but when I asked my banker if I should apply for a cc with them he said better not since I have no credit history I`ll most likely be denied and this can reflect.
He advised me to apply for a Capital One card.
I would like to build me credit history, I don`t necessarily need the credit card.
What is your suggestion?

I have multiple chase cards and have spent over a million dollars on it this year, if i open a chase account i get 10% more miles? Meaning if i spent a million ill get one hundred thousand bonus miles? If yes what do i ask for when i open a account?

When buying gift cards from the gas stations eg like buying visa gift cards from sunoco if I buy it as a 500 dollar card will it raise the ire of chase to close down my card and/or to not give me the 5 points when they see a 500 dollar charge to a gas station? Thanks Dan

will chase honour a points match for someone who applied before the higher offer but got approved after it went into effect? on side note how do you figure which amex cards have the great warranty like spg and which dont? also whats called to many authorized users that gets you flagged by americanexpress? Thanks man

As for Bluebird at Walmart, does anyone in the 10952 vicinity know if the ATM in Walmart located in Tallman works with bluebird.
To me it seems like a regular ATM with no features for Bluebird options.

Thank you for your business. As a gesture of our appreciation, we’re depositing a bonus of $25 cash back into your Chase Freedom account. The bonus will post to your account within 30 days automatically. There’s nothing you need to do — just enjoy it.

my daughter has a chase freedom as do i. i have a chase checking account and she doesnt. if my daughter transefered her freedom points to my points ( i believe i read this can be done) would the points she transfered to me be eligible for the bonus 10% i will get for having a chase checking account?

I just cancelled my chase sapphire preferred after they decided not to give me the 40k in points after 2k in spending after numerous contradictory info. Now I regret it remembering that I pay no int’l fees with it. They said they’ll have to pull my report to reinstate it–worth it?

I’ve had my Chase Sapphire Preferred and United Mileage Plus cards for almost eight months now and would like to get the bonuses on each again of them again. Should I downgrade my Sapphire Preferred card first or reapply for the Sapphire Preferred card? Does it make a difference if I reapply for both the Mileage Plus and Sapphire Preferred at the same time? Thanks for your help.

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